Apple Lets Siri Work Across Third-Party Apps, But Your Go-To Apps Likely Haven't Caught Up Yet

In the iOS 27.3 developer beta, Apple has expanded Siri AI's operation permissions from first-party apps to all third-party applications.

Per Apple's developer documentation, after integration, Siri AI can pull the user's personal context, process natural language prompts, and perceive the content currently displayed on the screen. Users do not need to specify which app to use in their prompts, as Siri will make that judgment on its own.

The core of this change is "full app coverage". Previously, Siri's support for third-party apps was very limited: for operations like sending a message or playing a song, you had to explicitly say "use [certain app]" to complete the task. Now it is designed to understand your intent, locate the correct app on its own, and arrange the sequence of operations automatically.

Apple has also added a feature called app skills. Developers can package multiple tasks into one single action for Siri to execute at once. The specific form of the packaged action depends entirely on the developer's own design.

It sounds great, but there is one prerequisite: developers need to integrate the feature first.

This is a feature exclusive to the developer preview for now. Third-party apps have to actively adapt to this set of APIs before Siri can perform operations inside them. Apple has opened the door, but the paths inside still need to be paved by developers themselves. So before you can actually use the function, you have to wait for your frequently used apps to roll out support one by one.

This move also follows the long-standing dynamic between Apple and developers: Apple delivers the capability, while the actual rollout speed depends on the ecosystem's response. What Siri's cross-app operation can ultimately achieve depends not only on Apple's model and API design, but also on how many developers are willing to spend time on adaptation.

For developers, the attraction of the new feature lies in Siri's massive entrance traffic and new interaction scenarios, while the cost comes from adapting to the new intent definition and permission system, as well as building enough trust for users to hand over their operations to Siri.

For regular users, the visible change right now is that Siri is evolving from a system settings assistant to a cross-app executor. This transition itself is more noteworthy than any single specific function.

As for how well it will actually work, we will have to wait until developers fill the ecosystem with abundant app skills to find out.